GM food, war metaphors and the perils of political entrenchment
June 3, 2012
It’s the Jubilee weekend. It’s raining. So I am looking through some tweets. Some make me think I should cheer myself up by writing a blog about songs used to make science (especially quantum physics!) public, others make me think that I really should write something about war metaphors in the current GM debate. As …
Carbon and energy/publics and politics
May 20, 2012
This is a follow-up to a guest-blog on climategate, media volume and public concern. As last time, this blog was written by Alan Valdez (The Open University) in collaboration with Brigitte Nerlich (University of Nottingham) and Nelya Koteyko (University of Leicester). It is linked to research on climate change discourses funded by the ESRC and …
Communicating climate change on the right (report)
May 3, 2012
This is a guest blog by Warren Pearce who will be starting work on the Making Science Public project in October this year. Warren reports on an event organised by the Policy Exchange: A greener shade of blue? Communicating climate change on the right. The blog was originally published here. ‘A grit in the oyster’ …
Languages of uncertainty
April 4, 2012
Communicating scientific uncertainty There has recently been a lot of discussion about communicating uncertainty in science in general and climate change/climate science in particular. Many scientists, including Sir Robert May and Sir John Beddington have talked about how uncertainty is intrinsic to science and have advocated being more open about uncertainty, with the latter stressing …
Climate communication conundrums
March 14, 2012
After climategate in 2009 I was reflecting on what this episode (which sort of opened the ‘door’ for the current climate ‘wars’) may mean for climate change communication. One thing struck me at the time: that climategate can be used to rhetorically flip previous (contrarian) discourses around climate change and climate science on their heads. …
Climategate, media volume and public concerns – what’s the relation?
March 2, 2012
In my last blog I promised some further discussion of the link between media volume and public concern about climate change. This is what today’s blog is about, based on some work I carried out with a former MA student, Alan Valdez. Discussions about the agenda-setting power of the media, particularly in the context of …
Weather or Climate? Enjoy or worry?
February 27, 2012
Gardening One afternoon last week I was watering some newly planted shrubs in the garden. The sun was warming my back and I was trying to enjoy that experience. However, there was this nagging voice in my head saying ‘drought, drought, drought’. In the evening I did the washing up, which I usually also enjoy, …
Waiting for gate-gate
February 22, 2012
Debates about climate change (global warming, the greenhouse effect and so on) have a long history. However, observers of the debate generally agree that 1988, the year that the IPCC was created, was the year that climate science became climate politics. From then onwards there was, on the one hand, a steady accumulation of scientific …
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- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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